On the Spot: Rep. Mark Waller

Editor’s note: Each week during the legislative session, Denver Post political reporters will sit down with Capitol newsmakers. This Q&A was edited for length.

Mark Waller ran for the legislature in 2008, knocking out Rep. Douglas Bruce in the GOP primary in one of the most closely watched races that year.

Waller’s an attorney and a member of the Air Force Reserves. Waller, 40, and his wife, Jennifer, have two children, Truman, 11, and Camille, 7.

In 2008, you successfully challenged Douglas Bruce, the author of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. What made you take on your fellow Republican?

I felt my kids were not on his radar. He didn’t care about whether our kids had schools. He had one thing in mind: eliminating taxes. I don’t think he cared about anything else. It’s not that we shouldn’t pay any taxes; it’s that we should pay our fair share of taxes.

But I have to say that since winning I have heard plenty of kicking jokes. (Bruce kicked a photographer on his first day at the session, before even being sworn in.)

When you’re home with your family what kinds of things do you do?

I do a lot of hanging out with my kids and my wife. Sports are big for us, huge. I did a Wii bowling tournament at my house over Christmas. I’m a big sports fan. My kids love to play sports.

When I got home from the legislature Thursday night, my wife took my daughter to gymnastics and I took my son to baseball practice.

What’s House District 15 like?

It’s essentially eastern Colorado Springs and a little bit of Falcon. Powers Boulevard runs right through the heart of my district.

My district borders two Air Force bases, Peterson and Schriever. Almost everyone in my district has a connection to the military in some way. We have a lot of retired military, defense contractors, current military, civilian employees.

I’d say we’re an upper-class district.

What surprised you the most about the legislature?

I wasn’t prepared for people calling me and asking me for endorsements, that somebody was going to care about who I thought should be elected to an office.

When Scott McInnis, for example, called and said, “I’d like your endorsement for governor,” that was surprising to me.

You went with McInnis even though a fellow lawmaker, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, was also running for governor at the time. Why?

We had two outstanding candidates for governor. For me, all things sort of being equal, both great conservatives and good Republicans, it came down to who did I think could win.

Having been an assistant district attorney in Pueblo prior to coming to the legislature, I knew that Scott had a great reputation throughout southern Colorado and I thought he had a better chance of winning.

You worked for Democratic District Attorney Bill Thiebaut?

Obviously politics didn’t come into it. In fact, I didn’t know Bill Thiebaut had spent 24, 25 years in the legislature. I just knew he was the district attorney in Pueblo and that was it.

I was deployed to Iraq when I worked for the DA and the office was super about it. I will always be grateful for that.

How did you wind up in the military?

I was in ROTC at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, then served in the Air Force from 1993 until 2000. I joined the reserves in 2001. I got my law degree from the University of Denver in 2003, and I was deployed to Iraq in 2006, prosecuting insurgents.

I was at Saddam Hussein’s trial. I got to stand face to face with him. The next day, I shook President Bush’s hand. Talk about a front-row seat to history.

On Military Day Appreciation Day at the Capitol you talked about your wife.

She’s a lieutenant colonel-select in the Air Force but she’s a general at home.

A select means she’s been promoted but hasn’t had the rank pinned on yet. I can’t wait. It means a big pay raise. (Laughing.) Somebody’s got to have a good-paying job in the family. Her working enables me to be in the legislature, that’s for sure.

When I told people I was going to was interview you for this, a lot of them described you as a “good guy” who really seems to enjoy being a lawmaker.

I do enjoy being here. I was ready to come back last September or October.

You deal with so many incredibly serious issues here; if you don’t have fun when you can it will drive you crazy. It was the same thing when I was a DA. You dealt with such serious cases you sort of had to have a bit of a twisted sense of humor to be able to cope.

What kind of legislation interests you?

Almost everything I have worked on has been criminal-justice related just because that’s my background.

My big bill of the year is a bill reforming our possession-related drug offenses. We’ve reduced some of the felonies and we’re going to take some of that money and apply it toward treatment and recidivism reduction. The bill came out of the governor’s criminal justice commission.

I think it’s going to keep our community safer, and it is going to cost less money over time.

Do you have anything else to add about legislation you’ve worked on?

It’s also very important, probably more important, for me as a member of the minority party sometimes to fight legislation as well.

One of the bills that I’m most proud of this year is a bill that didn’t have my name on it at all, House Bill 1205. It was a military exclusion bill. It was trying to prevent encroachment around military installations and give Buckley Air Force Base the opportunity to get the F-35 mission.

The problem was the bill adversely affected private property rights, particularly private property rights in my district. I have a tremendous amount of property that is within two miles of military installations.

What I wanted to do was amend the bill in such a way that we could make everybody happy, the property owners and the military. Quite frankly, the Democrats weren’t receptive to that in committee, and the bill got out on a party-line vote.

Then I went straight to work on the floor trying to get enough Democrats to oppose the bill. I went back to the sponsor and I said, “I think I can kill it. Why don’t we work together to make something good?”

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.